Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Solidarity with Israel is the best way of stopping the conflict and improving life for all in the region.

Editorial, 29 July 2014, by Steve Lieblich:We are seeing a flood of media coverage expressing commendable concern for the Gazan civilians caught in the war between Israel and Hamas, but sadly little for the millions of Israeli citizens threatened on a daily basis for many years by Hamas's terrorist acts. The coverage often also also simplistically blames Israel entirely for the suffering cause by war, while paying lip service to denouncing terrorism and completely ignoring human-rights abuses of the Palestinian Arabs by their own leaders over many decades.

Hamas incites hatred against the Jewish people in Gaza, starting with their own children in kindergartens, and around the world through international media. Hamas and Al-Jazeera are both heavily funded by Qatar. Al-Jazeera, which gets hours of airtime globally, is effectively a mouthpiece for Hamas. It seems that very many journalists have been mis-informed by this massive petro-dollar-funded propaganda campaign.

The people of both Gaza and Israel are suffering at this time, and Hamas is entirely responsible for this. Solidarity with Israel is the best way of stopping the conflict and improving life for all in the region.

Hamas was at first elected in 2006, but took control violently in 2007, and now rules Gaza by brutal force, creating an industry of death, inciting hatred and glorifying martyrdom.

It has squandered billions of dollars in international aid and instead of building a constructive economy in Gaza, it amassed over 10,000 rockets from Iran and Syria and built an underground tunnel network for infiltrating the Israel border to perpetrate murder and kidnappings. Over the years, there have been over 15,000 rocket and mortar attacks against Israel from Gaza; over 2,300 rockets in the last 2 weeks. And every Hamas rocket and military operation is aimed at civilians, not military targets.

We now know from captured terrorists, that if not for this war, Hamas would have perpetrated a mega-terrorist act this coming September, via their terrorist tunnel network, with the aim of murdering and kidnapping thousands of Israeli citizens.

Imagine if your Government knew about plans to perpetrate a massive terror attack like 9/11 or the bombings in London, would you expect the Government to wait until “enough” civilians had been killed to “justify” taking action ...or would you expect it to act now to prevent it?

Israel is on the front line of the West’s battle with violent extremism, whether it comes from Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or Ukraine. We should stand with Israel as it defends its people, and denounce Hamas terrorism. Israel is the front line, and if we don’t support it now, we will be fighting this battle in our own backyard.

Israel is targeting only the Gaza terrorist infrastructure, including rocket-launching and storage sites, training camps, the houses of terrorists used as command centres, tunnels and terrorists responsible for the attacks. Israel uses military to protect the residents of Israel, and Hamas uses the residents of Gaza to protect terrorists. Hamas hides in mosques, hospitals, residences and schools. Hamas orders Gaza civilians, warned by Israel to evacuate, to stay where they are. Hamas hopes this will either deter the attacks, or result in casualties that can be used as propaganda against Israel. Hamas considers every death to be a propaganda win, whether it’s the death of an Israeli or of one of their own civilians.

True humanitarians should be directing their attention to overhauling this failed Arab leadership that has impoverished and tormented the Palestinian Arabs for decades.

Arab leaders persecuted the Jewish Palestinians from the 1920s, and launched a relentless campaign, against the interests of their own people, to obliterate the Jewish national revival - before any “occupation” and even before the establishment of the State of Israel.

They flatly rejected the restoration of the Jewish homeland as mandated by the League of Nations. Even after Jordan was created from 80% of the British Mandate of Palestine, they rejected the 1937 Peel Commission proposal to partition the remaining 20%.

In 1947, the UN partition would have created an even larger Arab state than the Peel proposal. But for the Arabs' violent attempt to abort the partition there would have been no war and no dislocation in the first place.

…and the rejection continues to this day…

In 1949, Israel offered to return captured land as part of a formal peace agreement. Arab rulers refused.

From 1948 to 1967, Israel did not control the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian Arabs could have demanded an independent state from Jordan and Egypt, but did not. Had they sought peace and reconciliation, instead of rejection and global terrorism, a Palestinian state could have been established from the 1960’s.

They rejected the offer of Palestinian autonomy in the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace negotiations.

They scuttled the Oslo process that began in 1993 leading toward the creation of a Palestinian state, by violating their commitments.

In 2000, they also rejected the offer at Camp David to create a Palestinian state. And did so again in 2008.

Since their self-inflicted, violent and catastrophic rejection of the 1947 UN partition, misguided, self-serving Arab leaders have kept the dislocated Palestinian Arabs oppressed and in poverty, as cannon fodder, fed on hatred, false hope, and glorification of martyrdom. They've squandered repeated opportunities for statehood and economic progress.

Yet here we are, with Israel under attack by yet another crop of Arab despots, and the media know no better than to continue to vilify Israel….Solidarity with Israel is the best way of stopping the conflict and improving life for all in the region.

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